The invention relates to a gas turbine plant, and, more particularly, to such a plant including starter means for igniting the fuel in a fluidized bed combustor to drive a turbine under load.
It is known to heat the fuel in a fluidized bed combustor to an ignition temperature and to utilize the combustion gases from the fluidized bed to drive a turbine under load. However, in order to initially start such a turbine system, it is often necessary to utilize an auxiliary heating apparatus to initially apply heat to the fluidized bed material to bring it to ignition temperature. At that stage fuel can be added to the fluidized bed and the combustion can start working. Such auxiliary heating apparatus may be fairly cumbersome and inefficient in operation.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a simple and effective means for applying heat to a fluidized bed combustor in a gas turbine plant to start the plant in operation.
A further object of the invention is to provide such an ignition combustion means wherein compressed air is heated in an ignition combustion chamber and is passed through a fluidized bed combustor for heating the bed material to a temperature high enough to ignite the fuel when it is added.
These and other objects of this invention will become apparent from a review of the detailed specification which follows and a consideration of the accompanying drawings.